So a lot of breath has been used up on how federated or distributed or open BlueSky is or is not (the answer is, to the best of my understanding, "somewhat").
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This is inviting a discussion, not making a point. I'm not sure about the answer myself.
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Drew DeVaultreplied to Drew DeVault last edited by [email protected]
Is it scalable? Not sure. Is it private? Not really. Do I trust the people involved? I guess I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Does it have public buy-in? Definitely.
In the moral arc of the free and open source software universe, is it _just_? Well... maybe?
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@drewdevault there's two things that are of concern for me.. 1) as I understand its still a commercial? Model. This has inherent issues which makes me wary.
2) too big to fail and flagship issues. To many people in one place, gives a lot if power to the platform owner and to little to the community.These are reasons why I'm not jumping in any wagons.
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@drewdevault the biggest red flag for me personally is venture capital. There are countless projects that started as affordable or open source and useful / fun and gradually closed down, became worse or got captured and are now sold at a high price.
Redis of course, Eagle & Fusion, the new 3d printer from Prusa comes to mind as well.
VC will find a way to get the money back if the project is successful. With or without the original team and their good intentions.
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dorkus malorkus 🧙♂️🪄replied to Drew DeVault last edited by
@drewdevault I just can't see how it's going to be feasible long-term to self-host a relay, unless the relay only reflects some subset of the network, which is just ActivityPub with more steps.
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Derick Rethansreplied to dorkus malorkus 🧙♂️🪄 last edited by
@gjd @drewdevault It already requires 5TB of storage, so self hosting isn't really an option *now*.
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@drewdevault Just throwing this in because you're giving them too much credit for being federated:
"Bluesky and ATProto are not meaningfully decentralized, and are not federated either."
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@drewdevault I think we should stop dreaming about a potential unique protocol, to connect everyone, and that fit everyone needs. Their protocol seems easy enough to bridge to most of the other social networks (maybe even all of them). And their company seems open to this idea. Maybe it is enough to me?
But we need better bridges. Atm the existing solutions are not trusteable. If I connect to a bridge, I have no guarantee it will do its job, and ask my permission to share my posts to account that ask for them. I want for the bridges to reproduce the safeties we got here. Ask my permission for every handle that wants to "follow" me. And forward my posts for those handles, and uniquely those. -
@tomw fediverse people tend to think that any design other than ActivityPub doesn't count as federation and I'm kind of tired of it
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@drewdevault @tomw In the article Christine mentions the centralization of the data through the relays. She even write that DM goes through Bluesky's private servers, and not throught AT at all. These are legitimate criticism to me.
If people think about Bluesky as a federated representative. They might loose trust on federation if it crash at some point. -
@stacyharper @tomw yes, I agree... but if you can run a relay and it interconnects then that's still federation, even if it's costly. And I don't take costly as axiomatically bad
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@stacyharper @tomw and yeah the privacy is not good at all imho
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@drewdevault @stacyharper The key is that you can't run a relay. It's not just "costly" but already out of reach of pretty much everyone who isn't a VC-funded startup, and the amount of storage needed to do it (ie. to mirror every post ever) is growing every day. That's why there's only one relay. It's not meaningfully federated right now if federation is theoretically possible but not *at all* being done.
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@tomw @stacyharper the system requirements I've seen for a relay are perfectly accessible for small organizations and enthusiasts. Apache could easily afford to run one, or your university
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@drewdevault @stacyharper But they're not! Mostly because the cost is high and you don't gain anything from doing so.
Until *someone* else out there is running a relay and it succesfully federates with Bluesky's one, the network is at best "theoretically federatable", not "federated".
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@tomw @stacyharper agreed that it's only theory, but it is a legitimate theory and the math checks out
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Just acknolwedge this is your fomo talking, and go make a bluesky account. Don't try to turn it into some kind of meaningful philosophical process. You can make an account without a logorrhetic declaration of spiritual progress.
It's owned by crypto dipshits and is therefore destined to fail no matter what technical decisions they make in the meantime. They're venture-backed and the bills will come due. No amount of licensing can save them from shit-ass leadership of the type who is already discussing subscription models. The engagement hacking has already begun with starter packs.
None of this is to say you can't use whatever you want, including Bluesky. But please limit the number of words and red herrings you wrap around "I want the reach".
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@khm give me a break man, I made the account last week and said I was going to evaluate it and openly discuss my thoughts.
